[F]or Texas Democrats, struggling to make this a different kind of year for their statewide ticket, Obama's two-day visit to Texas, which begins Wednesday with stops in Dallas and Austin, is somewhere between a drag and a distraction.

Obama is very unpopular in Texas. Nearly half of all Texas voters strongly disapprove of his performance, and only 17 percent strongly approve, according to the most recent University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll in June.

And the timing of his visit -- planned long in advance for national Democratic [sic] party fundraisers in Dallas and Austin -- turned out to be particularly poor. It comes as a tide of unaccompanied minors, mostly from Central America, crossing the Rio Grande into Texas, also crossed a threshold from local problem to "national crisis," with all the attendant media attention and political finger-pointing.

....

Immigration might in the long term be in Democratic [sic] interests -- the more brown Texas becomes, the thinking goes, the more likely it is to turn blue. But in the short term, the issue is one that mostly rouses Republicans, who have moved to a harder-line stance on immigration in recent years, and that stance doesn't necessarily arouse as much of a backlash from Hispanic Texas -- at least those who vote -- as Democrats might hope. [Emphasis added]

....

The poll found that two thirds of registered Hispanic voters also think more should be done to limit entry into the U.S., and 38 percent support the immediate deportation of immigrants who are living in the country without legal authorization. [Emphasis, again, added]

Then the coup de grace:

Meanwhile, state Sen. Wendy Davis, the Democratic [sic] candidate for governor, and state Sen. Leticia van de Putte, the party's candidate for lieutenant governor, will be speaking Thursday to the summit of the Association of Texas Professional Educators at the Austin Convention Center, just ahead of the President's speech at the Paramount [theater], a few blocks away. But neither candidate will cross paths with the President during his two-day visit.